whiplash

and so drink wine in the dead of night because your back hurts, chain-smoke as if it kills the pain rather than occupying endless hours. wear your grandmother's old silk robe that smells of lavender and tobacco, don't bother about tying the sash. when rouge-stained cigarettes and ash coat the floor take a valium, take whatever they've given you, pass out right there until your spine wakes you screaming. 


and for heaven's sake don't show the girl who loves you how useless you are, clean up the wine before she wakes, brush your teeth, don't tell her how you're dead sure somewhere down by your gut that this will go on forever and she ought to leave you before you slip away into a cripple, a wino, a waif.